The Written Word
for December 19, 1999

The smokers haven’t got a case and Premier Miller, if he interferes with the Workers Compensation Board, will, if this is possible, get his government even deeper into the doo doo.

When I started to smoke at the tender age of 12 it was the adult thing to do. While parents discouraged smoking we all knew that we could smoke in front of our parents when we reached 16 years of age. At that stage we and our parents played the game that we just started smoking that day.

Camel cigarettes boasted that more doctors smoked camels than any other cigarette. Old Gold, in response, said "for a treat instead of a treatment." We kids were told that smoking would stunt our growth but that was treated with the same good humour by all that went with hair on your hands if you played with yourself … or going blind if you did such a thing … prompting one wit to announce that he would stop masturbating the moment he needed glasses!

In the 1950s it became clear that smoking was a serious health hazard … and in the years since it’s become clear beyond doubt that the risks are enormous. It’s not just lung cancer but every imaginable cardio-vascular function that’s at risk. It’s true that not everyone dies from smoking but that remains a medical aberration just as the fact that some people can drink two quarts of whiskey a day and have clean livers.

For a long time the matter was treated as a question of civil liberties. If one wished to smoke himself to death surely that was his right. Even the argument of increased medical costs was cruelly offset by the argument that since smokers died earlier they actually saved society money.

About five years ago or more, when municipalities seriously started to look at banning smoking in public places I did an editorial saying that it would not be long before it was no longer a matter of civil liberties but became one of health in the work place and dealt with as such by the Workers Compensation Board.

Incidentally, a proud moment for me as Health Minister and for John Fryer as President of the Government Employees Union came in 1980 when we made the Blanshard Building which houses the Health Ministry in Victoria a smoke free building.

Well, as predicted, the Workers Compensation Board has stepped in and for reasons of worker health smoking in all buildings including all bars and restaurants will cease as of January 1.

Now the howls rise from the smokers and the pub owners. But they have no argument. Smoking and second hand smoke is demonstrably harmful and you can no more expose workers to these harms than force them down contaminated mines. It’s no more complicated than that.

Yes, there is some tobacco company funded PR research which casts doubt on the adverse effects of second hand smoke but the medical evidence is clear – it’s harmful to the health. And how could it not be? Does anyone seriously suggest that the substances that kill users don’t also harm those who use by accident?

I frequently have dinner at Earls Tin Palace in North Vancouver, a fine restaurant which scrupulously obeys the present smoking laws. You should talk to the young men and women who are forced, by terms of their employment, to work, from time to time, in the smoking section. They are keenly looking to January 1 as a day of liberation. I rather think management is too.

I don’t make this as an argument because even if business is to suffer I would demand that WCB stick to its guns … but bars and restaurants in other parts of the world where smoking is banned have experienced an increase in business … in fact Wendy and I will start having the odd beer in our local the moment the smoking ban comes into effect.

In the meantime if Premier Miller interferes with the WCB he will have a lot more grief on his hands than he and his beleaguered government ever bargained for.

The right of workers to a healthy working environment badly outweighs any right to smoke and that’s the bottom line.